RPL equity offer on April 13

Mumbai, Apr 5 (UNI) Reliance Petroleum Limited (RPL), a subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) today announced that the company will make its maiden public offering of equity on April 13 within a price band of Rs 57-62 per share to raise about Rs 5,000 crore as part financing of its Rs 27,000 crore greenfield refinery project at Jamnagar in Gujarat.

While the RPL spokespersons, earlier in the day, declined to disclose details on the issue, a statement issued by RIL in evening stated that RPL today filed its Red Herring Prospectus which was taken on record by the registrar of companies, Gujarat.

RPL would raise Rs 2,565 crore at the lower end of the price band and Rs 2,790 crore at the upper end through 45 crore shares to be given to the public. Besides, RIL would subscribe to 90 crore shares at the issue price. This means RIL would pump in over Rs 5,500 crore in the issue.

Initially, in the Draft Red Herring, RPL proposed to offer 180 crore shares.

Of this, Reliance Petroleum had earlier this week raised Rs 2,700 crore through its pre-IPO placement of 45 crore shares. The placement was made to foreign institutional investors, financial institutions and banks at Rs 60 a share.

After the private placement, the size of the IPO, would stand revised to 135 crore equity shares. Of these, RIL would subscribe to 90 crore shares at the issue price.

The net issue to the public would be 45 crore shares and the retail investors would have the option to pay only Rs 16 per share on application and can apply for a minimum 100 shares and a maximum of 1600 shares. The subscription to the issue will close on April 20, 2006.

The private investors, who are believed to have picked up equity include Blackstone, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup.

RPL had recently concluded a syndicated loan of nearly Rs 6,750 crore. It also plans to seek additional financing through an export credit of Rs 4,500-6,750 crore to build the Jamnagar refinery.

The project will go on stream by December 2008.

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